Arleen stepped back into the apartment, Jori immediately tried to explain his side of the story. “She talking about putting Jafaris out with no coat on, no shoes, no nothing!”
“Jafaris went outside on his own,” Crystal snapped back. “But Jori like, ‘Bitch, I’m gonna punch you in your shit! Bitch, I’m gonna do this. Bitch, I’m gonna do that.’ ”
Arleen listened silently as a mother does when she comes upon fighting children. Jori was saying that he tried to stick up for Jafaris after Crystal threatened to put him outside. Crystal was saying that Jori exploded after she playfully locked them out of the house.
“Okay,” Arleen said when she had heard enough. “You ain’t gonna do nothing to her,” she told Jori. Then she turned to Crystal. “And you’re not gonna do anything to my child.” When Jori tried to speak, Arleen snapped, “And you can shut your mouth.”
“She not telling you the whole story!” Jori pleaded.
“Why would you call her bitches, Jori?” Arleen asked.
“She was callin’ me out my name!”12
“You know what?” Crystal yelled. “Yeah, I’m a bitch. But remember I’m that same bitch that opened up my door and let you stay here even though I didn’t know you from Adam and Eve. I was that same bitch that let you in! The landlord didn’t care. She don’t have to care.”
“I don’t know why you saying all this ’cause I know that,” Arleen responded, her voice assertive and clear. She sent Jori out for the groceries.
Crystal waved her phone in the air. “Whatever my mom says I should do, I’m gonna do, because that’s too much disrespect. Too much!” Crystal was putting Arleen’s fate in the hands of her “spiritual mom,” an older woman she met at a group home. She dialed the number, pressed the phone to her ear, and kept talking to Arleen. “If he’d just called me one bitch, that would’ve been fine. I’d have just chopped it off. But to be called a bitch for an hour straight?”
No one picked up. Crystal redialed.
Arleen walked to her room and began venting to the ceiling. “She always complaining there ain’t no food. But it ain’t my responsibility to feed nobody but my kids. Nobody!”
“I didn’t ask you to buy shit for me,” Crystal yelled back. “Because please believe it, ple-ase. ’Cause I’m gonna have whatever I need. Whatever. Whether I have to sell some ass, Crystal Sherella Sherrod Mayberry is gonna get whatever she needs! What-ev-er!”
Arleen looked at her boys. “I’m sick of y’all!” she yelled. “If I knew I’d be having to go through this, I would have left. What am I doing? I clean up. I just went and bought food for this house. What am I doing so wrong?”
Crystal dialed again, still no answer. Now it was her turn to talk to the ceiling. She began praying out loud. “God, I need an answer right now. God, please. I need to hear something from my momma, my bishop. God, I prooooomise you, I wish you wouldn’t have let me learn to love the way I love….I wish I would’ve been bitter for all the terrible things that happened in my life. Whoa, Lord!”
Crystal began singing a hymn. She walked around the apartment, humming and breathing in through her nose. Occasionally, she would pause and close her eyes. She was calming herself down.
Arleen looked at Jori. “You disrespecting, and she tell us, ‘You gotta go!’ Where is we going?”
“She—” Jori started.
“I said, where is we going?”
Jori went quiet and began to cry. Arleen had spent down her check and didn’t know where she would take her boys if Crystal tossed them out. She looked at Jafaris, who during the fight had distracted himself by drawing in a notebook: two monsters in hats and shoes; one big, the other small.
“You know what,” Crystal finally said. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and she was not yelling but purring in a new voice, hushed and soothing. “Let me say something. Eww, God, I wish you’d have never gave me the spirit of love….My feelings are hurt from both of y’all. But, I can’t, I can’t put y’all out….’Cause, like I told you, I am filled with the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost telling me not to make y’all leave.”
“Filled with the Holy Ghost but does more cussing than a little bit,” Arleen mumbled under her breath. To Arleen, it wasn’t the Holy Ghost but the meat cuts and potato chips and love seat that had delivered
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